The Arabist

The Ennahda leader on the BBC's interview show. A critique of the interview is here. Ghannouchi makes some controversial comments about Chokri Belaid's accusations of Ennahda tolerating violence, made shortly before his assassination.

A good report from Kafr al-Sheikh by al-Jazeera's Rawya Rageh. This undermines the notion that unhappiness with the Brothers is mostly urban, some of the current crises — notably shortages in diesel — are actually more deeply felt in the countryside.

Australian Prime Minister Julia Gilliard in a speech yesterday taking on the leader of the opposition in parliament after he raises naughty text messages sent by one of her cabinet's ministers. Really great, brutal speech.

This is the same woman next to which Mohammed Morsi readusted his, erm, package a couple of weeks ago — sparking a wave of jokes in Egypt.

This always astounds me when I'm in the countryside — the simply horrendous condition of the canals in a country where government long meant, essentially, the maintenance and upkeeping of irrigation canals. I don't think there's a better illustration of the extent to which Egypt has been badly run for decades.

I am kicking myself for not watching and publicizing this video, showing Egyptian presidential candidate Ahmed Shafiq being interviewed on a prominent talk show, before. He's either stoned, drunk, or on some very powerful medication. Quite apart from slouching and slurring, the answer he gives to the question about what he has to tell the Egyptian people (1:50) is utterly surreal.

The odd thing is that at other times Shafiq appears fine in the few other TV interviews he's given.

In connection with our previous post excerpting Josh Stacher's book Adaptable Autocrats, here's Josh interviewing (fellow Egypt expert) Jason Brownlee about his forthcoming book, Democracy Prevention: The Politics of the US-Egyptian Alliance. Look out for their conversation starting at 06:50 on how the Obama administration did not embrace the Egyptian uprising and encouraged as much continuity as possible with the Mubarak regime — "they were trying to minimize the extent of change" says Brownlee.

It took me almost a year to collect this rare footage from Arab films between the 20's and the 60's. With the rise of Islamic Fundamentalism after the Arab Spring in 2011, extremists have been calling for a rupture with the past and censorship of our heritage. This is a reminder of who we used to be, and that one day we were capable of showing love rather than condemning it...

A wonderful video in the context of calls for strict censorship in state television and cinema in Egypt. More generally speaking, some of these kissing scenes from the 1940s-60s are more passionate than many scenes of the last 20 years.